Dante Alighieri Quotes

They Said It

He fell so far there were no other meansto lead him to salvation, except this:to let him see the people who were lost.For this I visited the gateway ofthe dead; to him who guided him abovemy prayers were offered even as I wept.The deep design of God would have been brokenif Lethe had been crossed and he had drunksuch waters but had not discharged the debtof penitence that's paid when tears are shed.

The greatest gift the magnanimityof God, as He created, gave, the giftmost suited to His goodness, gift that Hemost prizes, was the freedom of the will;those beings that have intellect—all theseand none but these—received and do receivethis gift: thus you may draw, as consequence,the high worth of a vow, when what is pledgedwith your consent encounters God's consent;for when a pact is drawn between a manand God, then through free will, a man gives upwhat I have called his treasure, his free will.

All of my thoughts can only speak of Love,greatly endowed with such varietythat one compels me all his might to see,madly another does his valor prove,another makes me hope as well as grieve, and still another brings but tears to me:on begging but for pity they agree,such are the fears that in my heart still live.Thus, with no subject wherefrom to commence,I wish to speak, and know not what to say, in such a lovely labyrinth am I!And if for peaceful living now I sigh,invoke I must my only foe today—my Lady Mercy in my sole defense.

Since Love has parted company with me—to no delightof mine, as never had I known such bliss,but only for the facthe pitied so my heart he could not bear its crying any more—I, out of love, will now my song beginabout the sinthat inly dwells, and loudly welcomes backthe vilest thing on earth— the one whose name is worthor charm, a thing so fair it makes the soul,in which he reigns, most worthyof both a throne and an imperial cloak;it is the faultless sign that tells and points the way to virtue's home.If I defend it just as well as Iconceived of it within,Love, I am sure, will pardon me again.

These three passages are three translations of the same section of Canto V, in which Francesca describes her initial sin with Paolo. Their differences show how difficult the task of perfectly capturing Dante's verses in English can be_CITATION_UUID_7C6A21AC7E14478792446A0FD2AACF03_:Looking from the book each to the other's eyes,And then the color in our faces drained.But one particular moment alone it wasDefeated us: the longed-for smile, it said,Was kissed by that most noble lover: at this,This one, who now will never leave my side,Kissed my mouth, trembling. A Galeotto, that book!And so was he who wrote it; that day we readNo further." All the while the one shade spoke,The other at her side was weeping; my pityOverwhelmed me and I felt myself go slack:

Robert Pinsky, The Inferno of Dante, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994

.And time and time again that reading ledour eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,and yet one point alone defeated us.When we had read how the desired smilewas kissed by one who was so true a lover,this one, who never shall be parted from me,while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.A Gallehault inded, that book and hewho wrote it, too; that day we read no more."And while one spirit said these words to me,the other wept, so that - because of pity-I fainted, as if I had met my death.And then I fell as a dead body falls.— Allen Mandelbaum, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Bantam Books, 1980

Several times that reading urged our eyes to meet and took the color from our faces, but one moment alone it was that overcame us. When we read how the longed-for smile was kissed by so great a lover, this one, who never shall be parted from me, kissed my mouth all trembling. A Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it; that day we read no farther in it." When the one spirit said this, the other wept, so that for pity I swooned, as if in death, and fell as a dead body falls.— Charles S. Singleton, The Divine Comedy, Princeton University press, 1970